Apple Wants Another $707 Million From Samsung 316
angry tapir writes "A California jury may have awarded Apple more than US$1 billion in damages in late August when it triumphed over Samsung in a hard-fought case over smartphone and tablet patents, but the iPhone maker is coming back for more: late last week it asked for additional damages of $707 million. The request includes an enhanced award of $535 million for willful violation of Apple's designs and patents, as well as about $172 million in supplemental damages based on the fact that the original damages were calculated on Samsung's sales through June 30."
Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry to all the Apple fanboys out there, but it becomes increasingly hard to feel any sympathies for Apple. Seems that Apple's fame is slowly declining...
bad looser (Score:4, Insightful)
If a company has to make profit by law-suits there is something fundamentally wrong with it.
Apple (Score:0, Insightful)
are thieving vermin and deserve nothing but contempt from the courts and the public alike. Not one single device they produce is original or innovative in style, form or function, neither was using a fanboi to get a court verdict in their favour (Microsoft surely have a patent on that).
I am but a small cog (Score:5, Insightful)
But hope that my action of replacing my broken 2007 MacBook Pro (yes, the Nvidia chip and out of warranty) with a PC will help send a message to Apple.
No more Apple devices in my home.
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, I share your sentiment. Apple is increasingly becoming a downright scary company, Perhaps *all* their staff should watch those "think different" ads again. The company seems to be almost aiming for a Big Brother badge these days.
Obligatory Ice-T (Score:5, Insightful)
The game being IP.
Not so funny anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
How about the millions of damages for the idea of a tablet computer, posthumously, to Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke?
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what happens when you give into a terrorist's demands. You get more demands, closely followed by more terrorists. Blame it on the patent system all you want, it existed for a long time without companies behaving like Apple.
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:1, Insightful)
If not by law, I think they have an obligation to their shareholders to defend their copyrights and trademarks.
Re:Obligatory Ice-T (Score:2, Insightful)
You are full of bullshit. Apple is abusing the system. I don't see Google suing over bing. I don't see Google trying to litigate competition out of the marketplace. And suing over gestures? And icons in a grid? And generally abusing software patents progressively making it impossible to write software without having to spend money on lawyers. The list goes on and on. So its notjust the game it the fucking player that is corrupt. Fuck apple. They won't see another recommendation from me until they stop this madness.
Re:Obligatory Ice-T (Score:5, Insightful)
Why shouldn't we hate the players? The players spend millions upon millions lobbying to change the rules of the game in their favor, often at the expensive of innovation.
I know it's fun to mindlessly spout clíchés, but they're not always true.
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry to all the Apple fanboys out there, but it becomes increasingly hard to feel any sympathies for Apple. Seems that Apple's fame is slowly declining...
Right, because 2 million iPhone 5 pre orders in 24 hours is *clearly* an indication of declining fame.
I got news for you, the general public A) isn't aware of this litigation B) doesn't give a shit.
I'm not going to debate the right or wrong merits of the litigation itself, but if you think this lawsuit has hurt Apple in the court of public opinion, you're not capable of looking at the issue objectively.
If I were a shareholder (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry to all the Apple fanboys out there, but it becomes increasingly hard to feel any sympathies for Apple. Seems that Apple's fame is slowly declining...
Right, because a stock price that's still over $700/share and 2 million pre orders for the iPhone 5 in 24 hours is clearly an indication of declining fame. Most people don't know about or care about this litigation. They just know Apple makes stuff they like. I don't like alot of the things Apple does as a company, but I like the products they make. I don't like the products that their competitors make, they don't fulfill my needs. So what am I going to do, refuse to buy Apple out of some sense of moral outrage? Sorry, not going to make myself less productive as a show of support for some other big mega-corp? Samsung is not some innocent bystander getting picked on by the big kid on the block. There's sin enough to go around for *all* players invovled in the smartphone market, so the moral reprehension is pretty much a wash for me. So in the end it boils down to who has the product I prefer to use. Those are the people who get my money.
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:5, Insightful)
Samsung in 2011 did $42b in sales and $4.7b in profits. They aren't going to be strapped for cash. On the other hand an award that large would destroy the profitability of their Android strategy. It would turn infringement from a money maker to a money loser.
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:2, Insightful)
Bull. Infringement actions like this are typical there is nothing unusual here at all legally. Global scale and high degree of usage by consumers makes the numbers large. But really the only thing unusual about these particular infringement actions is you care about the products being disputed and are following the case.
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:3, Insightful)
A cap on wealth? All this will do is turn the creative into criminals and increase nepotism.. I've reached my cap where do I put the money now? Oh my maybe its time for my nephew to open up a 10 million dollar company! Do you see how this works? And if they clamp down on this? Then our best and brightest will all be in jail or wasting time finding further loopholes, sounds like a productive thing for society?
Don't propose unnecessarty laws and restrictions for which you do not understand the consequences.
It does (Score:4, Insightful)
While an individual doesn't send a large message, every little bit helps and just because each individual message isn't large doesn't mean that a flood of them will be small.
It also helps in that Apple is in a positive feedback loop of their stuff being popular because it is popular. Well, the less people who are seen with Apple products, the more it works to break that feedback loop.
I certainly encourage anyone who is angered at Apple's business practices to find other devices. The good news is that it is perfectly doable. There's nothing Apple has I'm aware of that you can't find a workable alternative to.
Now if you like the stuff Apple makes the best and don't care about their actions, fair enough, but "I can't find anything else," isn't a valid point. Android or Windows Mobile phones work real well, tons of companies will supply you with a computer at any price and quality point you wish and so on.
So the parent has the right of it: If you are mad at Apple, don't buy their stuff. Better still, send them a polite e-mail, letting them know. Even better still, let others know why and encourage them to do the same (don't be pushy though).
Re:The real news is Samsung's motion (Score:3, Insightful)
There is not going to be a new trial. I think Samsung was treated unfairly. On the other hand Samsung also engaged in serious misconduct during discovery.
There are lots of problems with this filing as well. For example Courts have repeatedly denied a monopoly in the copyright context over the GUI design concepts that Apple seeks to protect here. See Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. In Apple v. Microsoft the court never ruled that GUI design concepts weren't protected. The ruled the exact opposite that the expression of functional elements were protected. However, they found that Apple lacked standing not having been the originator of those ideas. Samsung's lawyers constantly intermix BS with truth and the problem is the court is seeing this as dishonest not good lawyering.
Swiss (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:3, Insightful)
Posting as myself since AC would be lame and I can stand for it:
So the brand of the tards can single handely destroy the worlds biggest mobile maker by ridicilous patent claims?
Awesome.
As if there wasn't reason enough to think bad about the people buying Apple products. Or the actual Apple products. Or Apple.
In all honesty though I assume they could raise their prices to afford paying for this or proper licenses, eventually losing part of their position on the market but if that's how it should be then fine. Maybe they had gained too much of the market by not paying for the "technologies" they used. I don't even know what patents and methods they have broken/used unlicensed.
For all I care we could drop patents completely. If that lead to no will to develop future technology in some field then I guess you'd just have to do it collectively and for the benefit of everyone through universities, research funds/prizes/taxes/...
Try to keep up ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:4, Insightful)
This recent behavior by Apple is no different than they've always acted. They've always been scary, they just haven't had the resources to be particularly dangerous until recently.
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:5, Insightful)
Blame it on the patent system all you want, it existed for a long time without companies behaving like Apple.
Bull. Infringement actions like this are typical there is nothing unusual here at all legally.
Uh, not bull, that's what he said. There's nothing unusual here at all, legally. That's the problem..
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:4, Insightful)
Out of curiosity, what do you believe the iPhone can do that a similarly matched Android phone cannot? What do you, in your estimation, "need" that only an iPhone can satisfy? Is it functionality present in iOS or is it software which is exclusive to the iPhone?
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:4, Insightful)
I think 17% marketshare for Apple vs. 4 times that for Android (68%) runs a steamroller over your argument that "most people" and "the public" believe what you think they believe.
Honestly. If you don't know the figures then stop perpetuating the myth that Apple is somehow the most popular mobile phone manufacturer/OS provider around. It's not, it's not even close.
Apple makes the most profit from smartphones and that's it, they certainly don't have the most support from the public or any such thing. Most people avoid them. Even if you discount the budget end of the Android market and focus on high end flagship products like Samsung's Galaxy Sx series, HTC One X, etc. and the equivalents for all the other manufacturers then even at the high end, that is, the expensive end, far more people are still buying Android and avoiding Apple so it's not even simply Android's budget phones that are driving Android's sales figures vs. Apples, most people just prefer Android devices, most people choose not to buy Apple, it's really that simple.
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just silly. Everyone knows that Apple's just trying to make sure they don't have to compete.
Competition is a pesky thing when you're on top. It's sort of the consumer electronics equivalent of the 1927 Yankees having the entire Philadelphia Athletics team killed on the way to the ball-park.
I mean, you're already 19 games ahead, but a little insurance is always good. And ultimately, it's not about winning, it's about humiliating the competition and making sure you win forever without having to try so hard.
It makes me understand why not everyone is comfortable having a businessman as president.
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mind you, I'd rather government be this magical free thing that nobody has to pay for. But cops, judges, tax collectors, municipal plumbers, soldiers, mayors, senators, councilors, sheriffs, and even prison wardens have to eat too, and every hour they spend on the job of government that they then cannot spend in the private sector has to be compensated.
So the question is, who should pay for this burden?
I'd rather tax the rich simply because they can afford it. The worst that can happen to the number 1 rich man is that he gets down to number 2, and if the government needs more money they both go down to number 3, who joins them on the trip down to number 4, and so on until the government's "civilized society bill" gets paid. There is a LONG way down before a rich man starts truly suffering poverty, or even inconvenience. Until he actually comes up short on something he needs or wants BESIDES being richer than someone else, he's got more money than he can use.
And that's assuming a 100 percent tax on the top bracket, which doesn't even have to be the case.
Re:Try to keep up ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is a patent troll because the patents they are beating over Samsung's head are bullshit and never should have been issued in the first place. Yet the court grants the USPTO a wide berth of "deference" when the USPTO is already rubber stamping things expecting the courts to clean up THEIR mess.
It's a chicken and egg situation where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
It's a racket.
And Apple is in on it.
That makes them a patent troll.
Worse yet, you can't get a reexam at the USPTO without shitting your position up in court if you get sued later. According to the law, if you botch a reexam you cannot use prior art as a defense in court.
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:4, Insightful)
It took this long for people to realize that Apple has never been nothing more than a cut-throat Capitalist company?
Really? Steve Jobs was NEVER a Saint nor was he ever nothing more than Bill Gates (in his Microsoft days) with a "cool veneer".
I'm sorry to all you Apple distortion field loving fanboys and girls out there but Steve was ALWAYS a vicious business man.
The difference between Jobs and Gates (besides the obvious) is that Gates changed over time and became an amazing philanthropist. Even in Jobs’s dying days he was still cut throat, admirable if you’re a business person but that’s it.
I’m tired of the rhetoric. Apple is just another company that since it’s driving force (Steve) is gone has been reduced to pissing matches with patents.
I hope Samsung wins.
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is this bad? Cash is being spread around. The nephew can use the money now, and hire employees for his new company. This is much better than having money rot in a bank.